Tuesday, February 21, 2012

I can’t help but notice that it’s been a few days since my last post. My apologies to anyone who thought I might’ve gotten lost, eaten, or worse, expelled (shout out here to my 21 year old friend, Sarah Bumgarner). I’m fully prepared to now suffer the consequences and try to condense my last few weeks of life into one blog. Here we go.

Several weekends ago, I went with a group consisting of myself and seven others to Lisbon, Portugal. To date, it’s one of the most fun trips I have ever taken. There was a period of time, though, that it didn’t look like I’d make it. Due to my tendency to forget things like money, cameras, and passports when attempting to travel, I was privileged enough to try out the Sevici Bike Company mode of transport prior to departure—thanks to my friend Marc, who lent me his card. I hadn’t yet experienced the heavy, oversized bike rental system, but it proved to be a lovely enterprise and I’m still going back and forth on whether or not I want to purchase a membership for myself. The only downside is that I found hurried rides to be less than ideal for anyone planning to ever be on the quarterback end of childbearing, so to speak. Anyway, all eight of us eventually made it onto the bus, which was already packed with people and required us to sit with random strangers. I, myself, sat with an eighty-some Portuguese woman who spoke little to no English, but by the end, she wished me a bon voyage and told me I was very nice and sweet. Like most of my friends, she was clearly a lousy judge of character. We walked up to our hostel just in time to see the sun rising over the Tagus River, and the staff was nice enough to let us check in early and have a free continental breakfast. The absolute rock star-status of this hostel would become a theme throughout the trip, and I’m quite proud to say we booked it at my suggestion. The first day, we walked around and hit most of what our guidebooks said were the must-see spots, particularly around Belém. We went to a small restaurant for dinner, where I ordered fried scallop. I include this to warn future travelers that “scallop” may also refer to a certain way to prepare fried pork. Rats! That night, David and I were the only ones foolish enough to muster the strength to check out the nightlife after going nonstop since 6:00 in the morning. We opted not to stay out for too long, but it was still fun to see.

The next day, we went on another free walking tour provided by the hostel, which ended at a huge flea market. It was a bit overwhelming — basically hundreds of people selling their lives and/or junk collections on the ground. I briefly thought about sending a small number of $5 full-sized carousel horses to my roommates just for shock value but figured the shipping would be outrageous. We went for river-front lunch after the market, and I was finally able to treat myself to some seafood (which my reading had told me was a must-try). My life savings and a sea bass later, our group split up and Rebecca, David, Marc, and I began a 4 mile uphill hike to the top of the park overlooking the city. The view was incredible and certainly one of the highlights of the trip. After returning to the hostel, we had a dinner prepared by the owner’s mother and then did a pub crawl, which was also organized by the hostel (I’m telling you, this hostel was legit). We started out at a bar with a reggae band whose set included a mix of Bob Marley, Kings of Leon, Eagle-Eye Cherry, and “Valerie.” Not quite the authentic Portuguese experience I had anticipated, but fun nonetheless. Next was a salsa bar, and the night concluded with two different clubs that featured some wild laser shows. Everyone seemed to have a great time, and at one point I found my roommate on stage requesting the quality sounds of Skrillex.

Which, speaking of— I heard that the guy received Grammy nominations? Seriously?

The next morning, we packed up and left. The following week was pretty anticlimactic in comparison. However, there was one semi-amusing afternoon in Spanish Conversation. Our homework was to write down a problem to send off to a hypothetical love doctor. The day of, I was pretty bored on the 20 minute metro ride and decided to add onto mine, thinking that we were just getting completion credit. In fact, we were not supposed to write our names down on our love problems and instead had our papers traded with those of our classmates, who then read their respective problem aloud and offered their own advice. Realizing the error of my ways, I scribbled out my name as best I could in a last-ditch effort to conceal my identity and was then forced to listen as the poor girl on row 2, whose name escapes me, struggled to read about a woman who eloped with a man her parents didn’t approve of, fell asleep on the train ride out of the country, woke up in a remote area of the world, and was refused the information of her whereabouts by her new husband—that is, the husband who she just found out is a polygamist also married to the train conductor, a gorgeous ex-Soviet spy. In other news, I am still struggling to make friends.

Morocco is coming up in a few days, although I admit that lately I’ve just been saying I’m going to Africa for the weekend on the off chance that someone will assume I have philanthropic motivations. School is really starting to pick up, too. I have 50 minutes worth of presentations to give in the coming weeks, and my third paper is due Thursday. It’s like they expect me to learn at a time like this.

This has been a very long post, and I have learned my lesson. Updates coming soon to a blog near you, assuming I live to tell about the monkeys.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

I hope that this write finds all of you well. At the very least, I hope that it finds you better than I find myself, as I sit in my bed and binge drink orange juice in attempts to bolster my immune system during— what I’ve decided to call— the cold war. The plan is to leave tomorrow (my half birthday, no less) around midnight and travel by bus to Lisbon, Portugal for the weekend. We will sleep for the duration of the ride and wake up in sunny Lisbon, returning Sunday night just in time for a late night Super Bowl screening and party. Should be a good time, assuming that I can shake off the congestion. Here’s what’s been happening as of late:

Along with Portugal, I’ve booked a few other trips. In a couple of weekends, we’ll be going to Carnival in Cádiz with a big group for Alicia’s birthday. It’s just for one night, but I’ll be taking another trip there later on in the semester with school. It is my understanding that everyone dresses up in costume for Carnival. If anyone has any suggestions, please send them my way, as I realized that I won’t be able to dress up as anything that’s a play on words…erg. Two weeks later, we’re taking a weekend excursion to Morocco through a travel group that plans trips for international students. I’m pretty excited for that, too, and the itinerary looks neat. Rebecca talked me into spending an extra 20 euro, which includes a tour of Gibraltar and ends with time to play with monkeys in caves. Everyone seems really enthusiastic about this. The brochure even includes a picture of a girl with a large monkey on her head, but I admit I’m a little skeptical. In the photograph, she’s smiling while the monkey holds onto her face and shoulders, but I can’t help but think that she’s fighting a voice deep down inside that’s urging her to consider, “Are these not the same hands that likely threw feces moments ago?” I don’t know. I’m probably just going to take pictures of Rebecca and laugh about the irony of her middle name, “Jane.”

This has been our second week of classes, and school has been really interesting so far. I think there are roughly 300 students in the International Program, which well exceeded my expectations. I’m taking 5 classes: 3 Histories, 1 Art, and 1 Spanish Conversation; however, I find that the people are much more entertaining to observe and talk about. It became clear almost immediately that many of my classmates are viewing this as a time to reinvent themselves socially, which extends to life inside the classroom. I never realized how much cohesion exists at PC –exceptions, yes—but generally speaking, in any given class there is a shared basic sense of humor, expectation of manners, understanding of the professor-student dynamic, etc. Here, though, this hasn’t quite been the case, and I have broken down the average student-traveler into 4 main categories:

1) Normal – This student is hard to come by, something like the white rhino of campus. He or she has probably found other normal students to associate with during class time but is also stuck having to hang out with the 2’s, 3’s, and 4’s who came from the same university.

2) The Steamroller – This is nearly always a female who feels the compulsive need to prove her intelligence and charm while also meeting every student sitting within a four-chair radius. Your efforts to end a conversation or Q&A with her would be thwarted the same as if you were to try to stop Niagara Falls with a tennis racket.

3) The Bro – You have yet to hear this individual talk about anything other than alcohol, Spanish women, or alcoholic Spanish women. He makes it a point to announce his reasons for eating a mint or using Visine even though it is noon, and he has worn his Mountain Weekend tshirt at least twice.

4) The Unicorn – You were unaware that people like this were alive. You are captivated when this person speaks and often find yourself wondering, “Why?” This category is a hard concept to grasp, so I took the liberty of jotting down what I call a Unicornistic Exchange in my Spanish Conversation class today so that it may be conveyed a little easier:

Girls 1 & 2 – {shaking with both hidden knowledge and a case of the sillies}“Her hips….her hips….don’t….BAHAHAHA”

Carey:- ___ -

-Fin-

If these descriptions sound somewhat familiar, it is because the International Program is almost entirely American (much to the dismay of my roommate). I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea, though. I absolutely love my classes here, and I’m still having a great time. In looking at my calendar, I can tell that this semester is going to fly by. It seems like I’ve got something planned for just about every weekend, and I can’t wait to kick the whole thing off with Portugal tomorrow. I hope that as you sip on your Airborne or Emergen-C you’ll think of me, as I have not yet been able to find a Spanish equivalent.

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I am very excited to study abroad and look forward to sharing my experiences through this blog. For those who are interested in keeping up with my life and its daily happenings, I hope that this will suffice, as I do not have plans to call, skype, or telegraph while there. One might also consider acting out some of the scenes I describe with friends and family both in the home and the workplace so as to distract from the distance that exists between us. Additionally, please be forewarned that the entries of this blog come as a result of taking pass/fail classes, maintaining extreme amounts of curiosity and open-mindedness, and lacking money handling skills. Thank you for reading.